Back to Featured Interviews >>

MEET KIRSTEN IMANI KASAI
by Bonnie O'Brian

What did you most like to do when you were a child?

Kirsten Imani Kasai

Read, of course! I also wrote stories, created “magazines,” drew and colored in these elaborate Dover coloring books that featured dolls, Victorian houses and historical figures. I listened to a lot of music and especially enjoyed hearing the tapes of “Suspense” and other old radio programs that my father played in the car on long road trips. We also listened to the “Let’s Pretend” radio series. Some of my fondest memories are of playing the backyard, making weed “salads,” mud pies and cakes, and scientific concoctions from leftovers and household stuff.

What books influenced you most when you were growing up?

MARY POPPINS by Pamela Travers (not the Disney version!)
The “PADDINGTON” series by Michael Bond
101 DALMATIONS by Dodie Smith (again, not the Disney version!)
Books by Zilpha Keatley Snyder and Lois Duncan. Fairytale collections by Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, and American and world folktales. I read loads of ghost stories, tales of haunting and supernatural events, the Flowers in the Attic series, lots of horror and medical thrillers. Then I discovered historical romance and plowed through at least a hundred of those.

When I was about 13, I read the THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP, which became one of my favorites and I reread that several times, then all of John Irving’s other works.

As a teenager, I began reading a lot of feminist writers—Marilyn French, Alice Walker, bell hooks, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and French authors such as Anais Nin, Marguerite Duras and others.

There was a bookstore across the street from our house and they would trade paperbacks 2 for 1, so I was a regular customer. I’d fill up grocery sacks with books and trade them in as often as possible.

Was your first book accepted immediately or did you experience a number of rejections?

ICE SONG was my second novel and the first accepted for publication. Any serious writer is going to accumulate buckets of rejection slips over the course of her career, so yes, I received plenty of them. Being rejected only made me more determined to publish, however. I don’t like being told “no” and can be very determined and single-minded when it comes to pursuing what I want.

Do you do other types of writing - for example, educational, nonfiction, magazine work?

Yes, I’ve written poetry and short fiction. I write regularly for a magazine and while it’s easy, it’s not nearly as fun as fiction.

What kinds of things inspire you to write?

Everyday events, news and world events, discoveries in science and medicine, I find inspiration in the smallest things, just by wondering “what if?”

How did your life change when you got married and had children? Did it make it easier or harder to find time to write?

Having children means that my writing time has to be focused and meaningful. I can’t afford to dither around so I’ve trained myself to be able to sit right down and sink into my other worlds when I’m working. As my children get older, it’s easier to reclaim time for writing but ultimately, I hope to be a full-time writer, so that my day job will be my fiction and my evenings will be for family and myself.

Do you enjoy researching or do you prefer working totally from your imagination?

I enjoy research and use it to scaffold fiction with fact. For example, I did a lot of research on cephalopods—octopi, squid and cuttlefish—for ICE SONG and its sequel, TATTOO. I have to understand how things work in the real world in order to manipulate those facts in a believable way for fantasy.

Do you write every day and do you have set hours that you work?

I try to work everyday, either doing research, writing, mapmaking/note-taking or marketing ICE SONG. I usually write in the evenings on weekdays and mornings/afternoons on the weekends, when I can grab a couple hours at the coffee shop.

When is your next book going to be in bookstores?

My next book, TATTOO, is scheduled for publication in 2011. I’m currently working on the final two books in the series, ASTA REQUITED and SAUDADE.

What do you most want the students to get out of your school visits?

I would love to encourage students to recognize and value the importance of storytelling—of crafting a good yarn—whether they are writing fiction, drafting a compelling essay, or merely relaying an anecdote to their friends.
           
It’s also important to develop an appreciation of the role of traditional elements of storytelling—archetypes, plot, symbolism, themes, goals and obstacles, character development—because these things are an integral part of human existence. Understanding how storytelling works helps people understand how life works—knowledge that can be an invaluable tool when deciphering real world motivations and behaviors.